The Jockstrap Raiders: Heroic British Misfits Defeat Invading German Armies

The Jockstrap Raiders is a delightfully wacky animated short film by animator Mark Nelson, which won the 2012 Student Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. In a slightly altered version of World War I, Germany is building a bridge across the English Channel to invade Britain.

Britain’s sole hope is The Jockstrap Raiders, a former amateur rugby club for freaks and geeks, all of whom had previously been excluded from the war due to various bizarre abnormalities. The team switches balls for bombs and goes into battle aerodynamically shaved and wearing only jockstraps, becoming the heroic flying squadron that foils the invading Kaiser and his army.

The Jockstrap Raiders: Heroic British Misfits Defeat Invading German Armies

The Eagleman Stag: 2013 SOTW Best Short Animation Award

“The larger our past gets, the smaller our present feels.”

The Eagleman Stag is an award-winning, stunning monochrome stop-motion animated short film by Michael Please, which was awarded Best Short Animation at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA). The film has received universal acclaim playing at high-profile film festivals including Sundance and SXSW, winning awards at Annecy and Clermont-Ferrand, in addition to BAFTA. The film was named one of 10 finalists competing for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The Eagleman Stag has just been honored as winner of the 2013 SOTW Best Short Animation Award.

Told in a distinctive, contemporary film-noir style, The Eagleman Stag is a story of life and fear, a darkly comic take on one man’s obsession with the quickening perception of time that faces all of us as we age, and his attempts to counter this effect. As Peter Eagleman nears the end of his days, his obsessive attempts to define the world, and his haunting perception of time within it, leads to progressively extreme measures to control and counter time’s increasing pace.

The intricate and incredibly rich stop-motion animated short tells a simple and sweet story of an elderly husband and wife, who have grown apart over the years. He lives on the floor, she lives on the ceiling, and their marriage hangs in the balance. When the husband tries to reignite their old romance, it brings their equilibrium crashing down, and the couple that can’t agree which way is up must find a way to put their marriage back together.

Adam and Dog: The Joy of Discovering a Loyal Friend

Adam and Dogis a stunning hand-drawn, 15-minute animated short film by writer-director Minkyu Lee. This 2013 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short, and winner of last year’s Annie Award, has been one of the most celebrated independent short animations from the past year. Minkyu Lee is a visual development artist for Disney’s feature animation department, but Adam and Dog was created as a completely independent film without any major studio involvement.

The film’s story is a parable for the journey of Adam and Eve, with references and symbolism to being cast out of some form of paradise into the vast unknown. The tale about man and dog in the Garden of Eden focuses on the theme of the joy of discovering a friend, and how despite the plight of his human friend, the dog’s selfless loyalty never falters.

The Maker: The Beguiling Preciousness of Life and Love

The Maker is an acclaimed stop-motion animated short film directed by Christopher Kezelos, which has screened and wan major film awards at a number of film festivals. The film has recently been nominated for Best Animated Short Film in the 2013 Short of the Week Awards, with winners to be announced beginning February11, 2013.

The Maker is set in a dimly-lit fantasy world, where a strange rabbit-like creature races against time, as he attempts to make the most important and beautiful creation of his life. Freud more than once implied that what is fundamental to our sense of happiness is the ability to love and work. Similarly, director Kezelos describes The Maker as an exploration of “the preciousness of our moments on earth, the short time we have with loved ones and the enjoyment of ones life’s work and purpose. In their fleeting existence our characters experience joy, love, hard work, purpose, loss and loneliness.”

Belly: A Heart-Wrenching Tale of Childhood Love and Loss

Belly is an acclaimed animated short film by filmmaker Julia Pott, created in 2011 for her thesis at London’s Royal College of Art. The film had a long and successful run on the festival circuit, including screenings at Sundance, Animafest Zagreb, SXSW, the Holland Animation Film Festival and the Hiroshima International Animation Festival (among many others). Belly has recently been nominated for Best Animated Short Film in the 2013 Short of the Week Awards, with winners to be announced beginning February 4, 2013.

Belly is a strange and beautiful coming-of-age tale that explores the bittersweet childhood transitional state of having to leave things behind. Oscar and his aggressive older brother Alex go the beach. Alex works very hard to put Oscar in his place, telling him that he isn’t old enough yet to go for a swim with him. Oscar, however, has a companion of his own, a “monster” who loves him and remains at his side. When Alex gets in trouble, it is up to Oscar and his monster to rescue him, but what Oscar gains from the experience in terms of maturity and Alex’s respect, is offset by the sadness of loss.

Paperman: A Sweet Celebration of Missed Connections

Paperman is a sweet tale of love at first sight, which is the favorite 2013 Oscar Animated Short Film Nominee. The groundbreaking 6-minute animated short is a gorgeous black and white classical-looking animation that nostalgically revives the timeless Disney-style of character animation and design. Paperman is the beta test of a potentially momentous shift in animation technology, using a novel new process to create 2D aesthetics in 3D.

Told entirely in pantomime, Paperman is a romantic comedy that tells the story of an ordinary young man who works at an ordinary job, traveling into and out of the city on one of the daily commuter trains. One windy day, he accidentally encounters a pretty young lady, who then boards her own train and vanishes out of his life almost as soon as she entered. Saddened by this brush with what-might-have-been, the man later sits despondently at his desk looking at the huge stack of forms the boss has just dropped into his in-box. But when he happens to glance out the window, he discovers to his great surprise that his dream-girl is at that very moment sitting near an open window in the building directly across the street. What happens next is wonderful, sweet, charming and magical in the best sense of the word.